‘Nigeria may lose US FAA Category One rating’

A GROUP Aviation Roundtable (ART) has warned that the Category One rating secured in 2010 may be lost if the Ministry of Aviation does not desist from interferring in aviation regulation.

Category One is the highest level of civil aviation regulation rating for any country. It is awarded by the United States Federal Aviation Authority (FAA)

Nigeria became the sixth African country after Ethiopia, Cape Verde, Egypt, Morocco and South Africa to attain the certification.

According to the Roundtable, the much-touted autonomy secured for Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) in 2006 is a ruse, as officials of the supervising ministry are not giving the regulatory agency the free hand to do its job.

President of the Aviation Round Table (ART), Captain Dele Ore, spoke yesterday at an interactive session with reporters in Ikeja, Lagos.

He said: “I am scared, the Aviation Round Table makes bold to say that the Category One status that we are so proud of is already been threatened and if we are able to sustain it for another six months under this dispensation, we will be too lucky. It did not take Ghana one year before losing her category one status. We are on the verge of losing it because of these undue interference of government in safety and economic regulation. It is not done. The International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) is against it. ICAO makes sure that it is a standard within which we cannot go. We cannot say that there is a Nigerian style of aviation. If we must do our own Nigerian style, we must go ahead in line with Article 38 of the Chicago convention.

“There is no autonomy under the present dispensation, safety and economy regulation is been manipulated from the ministry of aviation and that is exactly why the ECOWAS parliament said that there should be no ministry of aviation in their member states.”

In his response, Acting Director-General, NCAA, Dr Joyce Nkemakolam, assured that the Category One rating is not by any way threatened as alleged by the Aviation Roundtable.

Nkemakolam in a telephone interview said the fear by the group is non-existent, adding that the structures and processes that led to the attainment and sustenance of the rating for Nigeria are intact.

He said the autonomy of NCAA has not been tampered with as is being alleged by the group, adding that NCAA would continue to do its job.

He said the autonomy of NCAA remains intact, denying that the agency was under any pressure from the ministry to act contrary to international standards and practices.

On the allegation that NCAA was not doing enough to regulate domestic airlines, Nkemakolam said the agency is stepping up measures to bail the affected carriers out of trouble.

She cited the mediatory role the agency has been playing to resolve the impasse between workers of Aero Airlines and the management.